• Was forced to join in faux, masculine admiration of one man who had too large a testicle and decided not to remove it for fear of losing his regional celebrity.

• Was forced to drunkenly encourage my drunken friend to jump naked into the lake at 3 in the morning even though there were no lights (duh) on the surface of the water and based upon the number of whiskey ‘n cokes in his system a statistically decent shot he’d get his feet caught in the seaweed, drown, hump a loon, or at least pass out face-down in the muck along the shore.

• In a surprisingly fierce turn of conversational events, was forced to defend my interpretation of Vampire Weekend’s “I Think Ur A Contra.” (I do think Ezra Koenig’s referencing of Nicaraguan rebels is insensitive, I do not think that invalidates it as a fucking great song.)

• Was forced (not so surprisingly) to endure most of Rod Stewart’s early singer-songwriter catalog, as it’s a cabin thing, and has the unenviable quality of not including that song he stole from the Brazillian dude, “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.”

• Was forced to crush cans…while I was fucking typing this because my cabin-mates can’t tell I’m working on this laptop but what the hell else would I be doing early-afternoon drinking a morning bloody when there is ZERO WI-FI (which was not part of the agreement I requested when coming up here).

• Was forced to smoke cigarettes, mostly for posterity’s sake, but also to keep the drone mosquitoes back from my face.

• Was forced to wear my new trunks around all day in hopes of validation from the guys about how the trunks made my ahem look…but no compliments came.

• Was forced to tube, which meant was forced to take my shirt off, which meant was forced to sit next to other guys with shirts off, which meant was forced to rub sunscreen into said other guys’ backs, which meant was forced to think about whether I should shave my back or not.

• Was forced to dominate their sorry asses in board games.

• Was forced to admit that unlike last year I would “not be of any assistance” in the event our boat ran out of gas in the middle of the lake and were obliged to reach land by “manual” means including paddling but not limited to kicking/pushing/screaming. Are you kidding?

• Was forced to search 10 nautical feet of lake water for a good 60 minutes to find a dropped Go-Pro underwater camera so we could be forced to tag ourselves in still-motion pictures on Facebook so we could be forced to admit to the world we had an okay-ish time and keep up momentum for next year when they’ve promised me I will not be forced to bounce on a water trampoline and try not to puke in the lake.

– Chris Vondracek